A Hurried Announcement for a New Michelin City

Grant Achatz in front of his Alinea restaurant, second building from right. Alinea was one of only two restaurants in Chicago to earn three Michelin stars.Credit
Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times

CHICAGO — A strange thing happened on the way to Wednesday’s grand announcement of the restaurants capturing top ratings in this city’s first Michelin guide. An Old World tradition met a modern one — a leak on the review Web site Yelp.

So the leaders at Michelin hurriedly moved up their announcement to Tuesday, when they deemed two of Chicago’s restaurants worthy of their highest rating of three stars, putting it on par, at least by Michelin standards, with San Francisco (two such restaurants) and not so far behind New York (five).

The decision by the century-old arbiter of exceptional cuisine to come here, of all places, shocked some who live far away and tend to think of this city’s eating more in terms of broadening shoulders, hips and waists. But it was hardly perplexing to Chicagoans who had sampled the concoction of pineapple, ham and freeze-dried cherries decorating the tables at Alinea (three stars) or the Alaskan king crab lightly poached in citrus at Avenues (two stars).

Still, the Second City remains a place that wrestles with insecurity from time to time, and it seemed perfectly pleased on Tuesday to accept Michelin’s sign of approval.

City tourism officials were busy coordinating a Michelin-related cocktail party and a chance to have photographs taken with the puffy Michelin Man. They said they expected that the guide would mean more tourists, especially from other countries, and perhaps still more interest from innovative chefs in search of new Midwestern terrain.

“Chicago has already been on the map, but it certainly helps to have Michelin come,” said Curtis Duffy, the chef at Avenues, who added quickly, “Hopefully they’ll come back.”

Jean-Luc Naret, the director of the guidebooks — which grew out of the tire company’s effort to give people somewhere to go on their road trips, were first published in France and now cover 23 countries — said he had been drawn to Chicago by its creative range, from tasty “cheap eats” to a “unique level of avant-garde cuisine.”

Not surprisingly, the guidebook’s choices — of two three-star restaurants, three two-star restaurants, including Charlie Trotter’s and Ria, and 18 one-star restaurants — drew all sorts of chatter here among those who care about dining.

How, some wondered, had L2O seized three stars just after its chef, Laurent Gras, departed? And why, others moped, had other spots, Moto or Les Nomades, received no stars at all?

But in a way, the debate here was still more consumed by how the news arrived — more than a day early and not at all as Mr. Naret prefers, with a personal phone call to the chefs, an emotional and memorable event in the eyes of many.

By Monday night, the restaurant names had leaked out on Yelp. There, a member who used the screen name David “Primo” R. posted the list and seemed to suggest that he had seen a copy of the book that had been mailed out early.

“It was like taking Christmas away,” said Mr. Duffy, who despite the breach brought much of his staff to the restaurant at 7 a.m. Tuesday to await Mr. Naret’s hastily rescheduled call, which they listened to on speakerphone.

For his part, David “Primo” R. declined an interview in an e-mail exchange and would not provide his identity. “Today is about the recognition of the Chicago food scene, its acknowledgment on the world stage, and — most importantly — the chefs who have brought it there,” he wrote.

The episode underscored a growing tension in the review world between established guidebooks like Michelin and Zagat and the blooming universe of Internet review sites like Yelp, Urbanspoon and Citysearch. Some industry analysts said the more established review publishers simply catered to a different audience, but others said the competition between the two was clearly growing.

“Even as a young 22-year-old, I looked up to the chefs who got three stars from Michelin,” said Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea, who is now in his mid-30s and said he still viewed Michelin as the “golden” standard. “For the 22-year-old cooks in my kitchen, 10 years from now is Michelin going to matter as much to them?”

It did not matter to everyone here in the first place. On the streets, plenty of passers-by said they had never heard of Michelin and seemed unmoved, though they seemed pleased to hear that the city’s fare ordinaire (deep-dish pizza and barbecue ribs) had gotten mentions (if not stars) in the new guide.

Bill Sianis, whose family runs the Billy Goat Tavern, a beer and cheeseburger joint (made famous by “Saturday Night Live”), said no one was waiting by the phone for a star on Tuesday.

“We’ve always had great food in Chicago,” Mr. Sianis said. “We get people from all over the world in here, and their word is good enough for us.”

Andrew Keh contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on November 17, 2010, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: A Hurried Announcement for a New Michelin City. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe